The catastrophe in the Moscow Metro with derailment of carriages on July 15 became just the second emergency with fatalities caused by technical failure in the nearly 80-year history of the Russian capital’s subway.

Without taking into account several terror acts staged in Moscow
Metro over the last 40 years, there has only been one equipment
malfunction incident that caused the loss of human lives.

On February 17, 1982, an escalator taking people down to
Aviamotornaya Station, one of the deepest in the Metro system,
broke and started to move down with increasing speed. When the
emergency brakes activated, most passengers could not withstand
the abrupt deceleration and tumbled downstairs. Some 100 bodies
hurtled forwards, resulting in eight deaths and 30 passengers
injured.

Overall there have been nine occasions when unexpected technical
failures interfered with Moscow Metro operations and left
passengers injured, but in seven of those, fatalities were
avoided due to the professionalism of Metro staff and a bit of
good luck.

The emergency situations varied. There were battery short
circuits that caused carriage fires, as for example in 1987 when
one of the cars caught on fire on Paveletskaya station. Luckily
no one was hurt.

In another case in 1994 there was a series of accidents on
Serpukhovsko–Timiryazevskaya line as 2
collisions and one derailment occurred in just 12 hours. Overall,
20 passengers were hurt and 9 of them hospitalized.

Among the emergency situations in 1996, a train driver fell
asleep in the cabin of an empty train moving into a depot for
maintenance. As a result the train went through the depot
building and crashed through its rear wall, with several
carriages rolling right into the street.

In another emergency, train driver Andrey Ulyanov saw a pile of
cement breaking the tunnel’s apex and blocking the railway
altogether right in front of the moving train. Only Ulyanov’s
reaction and emergency braking saved passengers from a fatal
immediate stop that would have sent all passengers inside the
train flying forward. His professionalism saw him immediately
disconnected the conductor rail, inform passengers about the real
reason for the emergency stop and organize the safe evacuation of
the passengers. As a result there were no casualties. For his
actions, Ulyanov was decorated with the ‘For Merit to the
Fatherland’ medal.

Moscow Metro faced its biggest failure in May 2005 during a mass
blackout. 50 of the 170 metro stations stopped operating.
However, panic was avoided as after 20- 30 minutes the people
started evacuating from the stations and tunnels.

In the most recent accidents, at least 76 people were injured in
an incident in June last year at downtown Okhotny Ryad station
when a cable in the tunnel caught fire. An estimated 4,500 people
were evacuated from the metro, and some trains were stopped
inside tunnels when the flames first erupted.

Meanwhile in March this year a mass evacuation was prompted as
four Moscow metro stations were flooded in the western part of
the Arbatsko-Pokrovskaya line. Huge crowds of people could be
seen in amateur videos leaving the affected stations.